[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 24052-24059]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          OPPOSING FAST TRACK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simmons). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I joined a number of my 
colleagues from the House and leaders of the most influential 
environmental groups in the United States to express opposition to so-
called Fast Track, granting the President Trade Promotion Authority. 
The presence of this coalition highlighted quite impressively the 
solidarity of the environmental community on this critical vote.
  Another thing that underscores the solidarity of the environmental 
community against the Thomas bill is the stern warning issued by the 
League of Conservation Voters that it will likely score this vote. The 
LCV takes its scoring seriously and to ensure balance in its ratings 
only scores environmental votes for which there is absolute unanimity 
in the environmental community. The League of Conservation Voters has 
never before scored a trade vote. That means the environmental 
community has never been so focused on and so unanimously supportive of 
and so involved in a trade vote in this country's history.

[[Page 24053]]

  Why is there such urgency in the environmental community in 
opposition to the Thomas Fast Track proposal? Because this bill would 
do nothing, would do nothing to prevent countries from lowering their 
environmental standards to gain unfair trade advantages. It would do 
nothing to require that the environmental provisions be included in the 
core text of our trade agreements, because it would do nothing to 
ensure that the environmental provisions in future trade agreements are 
enforceable by sanctions.
  Instead, it would transfer the burden to consumers and to regulators 
to prove that the science underlying domestic regulation is beyond 
dispute, resulting in a downwards harmonization of our environmental 
laws, a rollback of environmental laws, a weakening of environmental 
regulation. It would encourage Western companies to build manufacturing 
plants in countries with the least stringent environmental laws, and, 
as a result, cost skilled American workers good-paying jobs.
  It would allow future trade agreements to include provisions like 
NAFTA's chapter 11, encouraging so-called regulatory tax claims by 
foreign companies and threatening hard-won democratically enacted laws 
and regulations that protect our natural resources.
  This investor-state relationship cast by chapter 11 of the North 
American Free Trade Agreement exemplifies the greatest imaginable abuse 
of our democratic principles. It allows private corporations to sue a 
sovereign government and overturn domestic health and safety laws.
  Think about that for a minute. A country can pass a law that that 
country's democratically elected legislative body contends, believes, 
will in fact help the environment and promote public health. A company 
in another country, a privately owned large corporation in another 
country, can go to court and sue the government, the democratically 
elected government, even force that democratically elected government 
to repeal its environmental law to weaken its public health 
regulations.
  U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick, a Bush appointee, is 
committed to including those same anti-consumer, anti-environmental, 
anti-public health, anti-combat-bioterrorism provisions in Fast Track. 
Under this provision, not only can laws be overturned, but taxpayers of 
the subject nation can be liable for damages if a NAFTA tribunal rules 
that a law or regulation causes an unfair barrier to free trade.
  That sounds pretty outrageous. It makes one incredulous. It sounds 
like it could not happen, but it actually happened. When Canada passed 
a law to promote clean air in automobile emissions, Canada's public 
health community said this is important to fight cancer in Canada. A 
U.S. company sued Canada in a NAFTA tribunal. The U.S. company won the 
case against Canada, which had passed a public law protecting the 
public health. Canada had to repeal its public health law. Canada had 
to pay this American company $13 million.
  Sometimes it will be against Canada and a democratic law there, 
sometimes it will be against the United States and a public law here, 
sometimes against Mexico, France, Germany or wherever.
  I am joined today by my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Strickland), and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior). The three of 
us worked many years ago in opposition to NAFTA, and the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Bonior) in those days, as he has continued to, has led 
the opposition to these agreements.
  I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I would like to say to my friend from Ohio that as I 
am standing here listening to what you are saying, it causes me to 
think there are some in this Chamber who are willing to relinquish 
their responsibilities to protect the ability of this country to make 
sovereign decisions in the best interests of the people that we were 
elected to represent.
  I mean, to think that we in this body as representatives of the 
people could come together in a deliberative process, make a decision 
that we collectively feel is in the best interests of the health and 
safety of our Nation, and then to have entered into an agreement that 
would allow a for-profit foreign corporation to bring suit against our 
government based on their objections to what we think is best for the 
United States of America, it seems to me if we were to allow that we 
are relinquishing our constitutional responsibilities.
  Who are we responsible for representing and protecting, some foreign 
national company, a multinational company with no particular allegiance 
to any country, any democratic principles, any form of government, but 
whose bottom line is in fact profit? It just seems almost unbelievable 
to me that we would ever allow that to happen. It is an unconscionable 
thing. It is difficult to even contemplate that this government would 
ever permit that.
  What the gentleman says, I assume, is an accurate interpretation of 
what the circumstances would be.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Even people that support Trade Promotion Authority 
acknowledge that that is what that provision does. When it was put into 
NAFTA in 1993, when this Congress in a very narrow vote passed NAFTA in 
November of that year, people did not quite understand that provision.
  That provision was sold to the Congress and to the American public. 
Even though the three of us all voted against NAFTA that are talking 
this evening, this afternoon, that provision was sold to protect 
American investors in Mexico where the government might expropriate or 
take their properties.
  But in fact it is clear that the way that has worked is time after 
time after time corporations have sued foreign governments, in this 
case Canada, Mexico, the United States, a corporation in one of the 
three countries has sued a government in one of the other two, and each 
time, in almost every case, the government has lost, the government 
which passed these laws to protect in most cases the public health, 
sometimes the environment, sometimes consumer protection law, but laws 
that were passed by those governments were repealed. It is almost so 
unbelievable that you cannot believe that this Congress would do it.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I was just thinking very recently, in fact, just a 
few days ago, we were able to get an amendment in the defense bill that 
would require that any steel used in the military apparatus that would 
be purchased with funds in that bill would have to be American-made 
steel.
  I remember as we were discussing and debating that possibility, there 
were those who said, well, this would be acceptable, because there is 
an exemption for these kinds of decisions that relate specifically to 
national security. But what the gentleman is saying, I believe, is that 
in most cases there could be a decision made by this House of 
Representatives, the Senate of the United States, legislation signed 
into law by the President, and if it was interpreted to be in violation 
of these trade agreements as providing perhaps protections to our 
citizens that under the international trade laws would be deemed 
inappropriate or inconsistent with those laws, that there could 
actually be legal action taken against our government by a foreign 
corporation to try to force a change in the domestic law of this land. 
Is that a correct interpretation?
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The correct interpretation in this case, it is 
very possible that a steel company in Mexico or Canada might sue the 
U.S. Government for passing a provision like that, saying that is an 
unfair trade practice, and might be able to get the NAFTA tribunal, the 
three-judge panel, to overturn U.S. law.

                              {time}  1800

  One of the reasons they do that and one of the reasons these three-
judge panels have decided against public health laws, against 
environmental protections passed by a majority of this House and Senate 
and signed by the President, or consumer protection or any of those 
laws, is because of the nature of those three-judge tribunals, those 
panels. They are made up of trade lawyers, not public health experts, 
not consumer protection experts,

[[Page 24054]]

not environmental experts. They are made up of trade lawyers.
  They meet behind closed doors. They do not accept petitions or 
testimony from third parties, and they then can turn around and repeal 
a sovereign nation, as we are, as Mexico is, as Canada is. They can 
repeal a sovereign nation's public health and environmental laws.
  So when we have these panels made up of trade lawyers who typically 
sit in downtown offices and rule on trade issues and decide the arcane 
minutia of trade issues but do not have any real expertise or any real 
interest in environment or public health issues and policy and laws, we 
lose time after time after time. We have lost public health laws and 
environmental laws repeatedly in the World Trade Organization with 
those same secret panels making those decisions. We do not know 
anything about the proceedings and, all of a sudden, it is in the 
paper. We get a notice.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, to follow up on this very good discussion on 
sovereignty here, it gets to not only the question of multinational 
corporations, foreign corporations in the example that the gentleman 
from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) gave, but there is also a taking away of 
local units of government's power and State units of government's 
power.
  For instance, we have a particular problem in my State of Michigan 
with trash, garbage, coming in from Canada. Toronto has decided that it 
is much easier, more economical, less hassle, to bury all of their 
waste in Wayne County, Michigan, which is the county the City of 
Detroit is located in. So they haul their garbage across the Ambassador 
Bridge, the Bluewater Bridge in my area up in Port Huron. We have a 
couple hundred trucks a day that come across there with garbage, and 
God knows what is inside these facilities, and they take it to a dump, 
and they dump it there.
  Now, let us assume that we try to overturn the basic law of this 
country which says that garbage companies are free to move garbage 
anywhere they want to vis-a-vis the Interstate Commerce Clause of the 
Constitution. There was a court ruling that was made in 1992, I 
believe, on the Fort Gratiot landfill case which went all the way to 
the U.S. Supreme Court.
  If we decided in this institution or the State of Michigan decided in 
their legislature to say, no, you cannot do that, you cannot bring your 
garbage and make Michigan a dumping ground, that company or those 
companies, those trash haulers, those garbage companies could go to 
court and say, well, wait a minute. This is an impediment on free 
trade. This is an impediment of moving commerce. And those kinds of 
panels that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) just alluded to could 
make the decision that what we do here or what they do in the State of 
Michigan is irrelevant, because it impedes trade.
  Now, there are hundreds of U.S. laws on the environment, as the 
gentleman pointed out, on food safety, on antitrust, on just laws that 
deal with people expressing themselves at the local level about a 
policy on human rights that they may object to, which may be taking 
place in a regime that is persecuting its people abroad that could be 
struck down as a result of empowering international panels and taking 
away the power from this institution, local and State governments.
  So this is real serious stuff, and it goes way beyond just dollars 
and cents in trade. We are talking, as the gentleman pointed out, about 
food safety, health care, human rights, antitrust, labor law. You name 
it. It is all kind of wrapped up here.
  If I could make one other point and then yield back to those who have 
the time, that is the broader issue here of relinquishing our power as 
a Nation and as a State and as governments. But the more internal 
debate to that is what this institution, this U.S. House of 
Representatives is doing in terms of receding from the powers that the 
Constitution gives us in Article I, Section 8, which is the power to 
deal with trade laws. We are handing that over to the executive branch. 
It is very, very disturbing, the change in the balance of power 
switching over to the executive branch and to corporate America, 
basically, here. That is what is going on.
  This may seem a little arcane to people, a little not too clear 
because of its legalistic implications and language, but I can assure 
my colleagues that it gets right back down to whether or not we are 
going to have garbage buried in our backyard or out our window, or 
whether or not we are going to be able to go to the supermarket and get 
food that we are assured is going to be safe for us to feed our 
families.
  I mean, it gets down to some really basic things here. We are trying 
to bring the argument and trying to make the American people see that 
under the cloak or the disguise of this legalese debate we are having 
here on ``fast track,'' that it is going to affect everybody in this 
country in a dramatic way.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for raising the issue.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, none of the three of us is a lawyer; 
and we are explaining, in a sense, a legal procedure here that really 
is pretty simple. It is a question of increasing corporate powers by 
turning over our sovereignty, turning over our ability to make 
democratic determinations, whether it is where a community puts its 
trash, whether it is a food safety law, whether it is a clean air 
regulation, whether it is a public health program. We are saying in 
these agreements that we will cede power from a democratic government 
to a private corporation.
  Mr. Speaker, when we come to this institution, we have seen this kind 
of corporate power in this institution. There is not much doubt that 
corporations wield huge amounts of power when we try to pass strong 
food safety laws, we try to pass good public health laws, clean air 
laws, bioterrorism laws, protections for our food supply, labor 
standards, minimum wage. Whenever we try to pass a bill like that, it 
is always met with huge resistance from the largest corporations in the 
country, the largest corporations in the world. So we, in many cases, 
overcome that resistance and do what is right for the public.
  I wear this lapel pin which symbolizes a lot of things to me. It is a 
canary in a birdcage. One hundred years ago the miners used to take a 
canary down in the mines in a birdcage, and if the canary died, the 
miners they had to get out of the mine. It was the only protection they 
had. The government did nothing to help them.
  In these 100 years, when 100 years ago the average child born in this 
country could live to be about 47 in terms of the average, in those 100 
years this institution has passed minimum wage laws, safe drinking 
water, pure food laws, Medicare, Social Security, clean air laws, 
worker protections, mine safety. We have done all of those things 
against great resistance from the wealthiest, most privileged people in 
society. We have been able to do that in this institution.
  Now, even when we do that, we are going to see corporations in one 
country try to overturn the laws we have done. So we passed them with 
great difficulty against huge campaign contribution dollars and 
lobbying and all of the special interest groups that fight progressive, 
good government that helps the public, and then these groups turn 
around now, these big companies, and they sue democratic governments to 
stop, to overturn their environmental laws and weaken their food safety 
laws and hurt their labor laws and try to devastate so many of the 
protections that we have been able to accomplish as a society, with 
people pushing their Congress to do the right thing.
  Now some faceless bureaucrats on a trade panel, a NAFTA tribunal can, 
out of the public light, in a back room, simply wipe away those kinds 
of environmental laws.
  Mr. BONIOR. And then, Mr. Speaker, go to the lowest standard, go to 
the lowest standard. That is what they are after. They want to take us 
back to where we were when people used to take canaries down in a 
birdcage. They

[[Page 24055]]

go to the lowest standard, and the lowest standard is often in the 
developing world.
  It is in countries that are trying to develop a body of law but 
cannot get there because of the international corporate pressure not to 
go there, to keep wages low, to keep standards low. They cannot get 
there because labor unions cannot form because of that same kind of 
pressure. They cannot get to our standard.
  So because they cannot get to our standards because of institutional 
pressures within their own country, these corporate entities now have 
bonded together with them and are trying to bring down our standard 
here.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, before I yield to the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Strickland), we are joined by three other Democrats, and they 
are the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell); the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee); and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Solis).
  Let me yield to the gentleman from Ohio, and then the rest can join 
in.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. But I think it is 
important for those who are listening to us to understand why we are 
here tonight, and it is because we are going to be called upon tomorrow 
to cast a vote, and we are going to cast a vote that will protect the 
sovereignty of our Nation, or we will cast a vote that potentially will 
turn over all the decisionmaking that is important to all of the 
multiple millions of people that we collectively represent to this 
three-panel assemblage.
  Now, I would like to ask the gentlewoman from Texas, and I think I 
know the answer, but which American citizens are able to vote and 
select any of those three persons that would be in a position to make 
decisions regarding the health and safety and security of this Nation? 
Is any American citizen ever going to be in a position to cast a vote 
to select these persons who are going to be making decisions for all 
Americans?
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, before the gentlewoman from Texas 
answers, here is an additional question. Is anybody even going to know 
the names of the people that sit on that panel?
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, obviously, absolutely not. And 
as the gentleman makes that point, the people's House, the 
representatives that come to the people's House, are themselves barred 
from even speaking on behalf of the people for having any oversight 
into this kind of legislative initiative. So I see no opportunity for 
the people to speak about this legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to further the point of the 
distinguished gentleman, because I think it is a very valid point. I 
rise to suggest to my colleagues in a bipartisan manner that a far 
better approach would have been if we had accepted both the offer and 
the interest some years back of the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Sweeney). I do not come to the floor to quote or to put words in the 
gentleman's mouth at all, but I do remember some years back when these 
discussions were coming about and there was some interest to be able to 
hear the vital points that labor had to offer about how we can truly 
have the working people's trade bill. I believe that he had some very 
meritorious points that would have allowed us, even to this point, to 
come together with a bill that would have answered many of the concerns 
that are totally ignored in H.R. 3005, which is the Thomas bill.
  That is, if I can point out, number one, there are no labor standards 
whatsoever. Right now in my district I have 4,000 people laid off by 
one of our very vital companies. We may have a total of 10,000. I would 
venture to say that those constituents are really looking for jobs 
right here, and their priorities are more about how they are going to 
survive over the holiday season.
  I have taken trade on a case-by-case basis, looking to see 
opportunities where we could work together. In this instance, I have 
higher priorities, and that is to be able to assist those individuals 
in finding jobs, keeping jobs, and providing for their families.
  Tomorrow we are going to be asked, rather than dealing with those 
needs, the unemployment needs of America, to put forward a bill that 
disallows any type of labor standards so that countries with poor labor 
standards will maintain those standards; and, in fact, under the 
present bill that we have, the underlying bill, countries with poor 
labor standards are not required to have or implement any of the five 
core standards. So no labor standards whatsoever. That suggests to me 
that, rather than benefit from jobs being generated, we will lose by 
jobs being lost to other places, because someone will try invariably to 
avoid following any labor standards.
  Might I also say that, in talking to many corporations, I have heard 
them saying that we wish we could have worked in a bipartisan way. We 
wish we could have had more people at the table. As it relates to the 
environment, we are finding out that there is no addressing of the 
environment in the Thomas bill.

                              {time}  1815

  There are no legal or technical incentives to make sure we strengthen 
the environmental laws and regulations.
  Then I would like to speak to, as I sort of draw to a close, the idea 
of the point that the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) 
made; that is regarding the oversight, the voice of the people, the 
people's House being able to speak.
  With a narrow three-person body, there is no opportunity in the bill 
that will be on the floor tomorrow for us to have congressional 
oversight, for there to be an involvement of the people's voice; for 
the voters who have voted for those in this body and elsewhere to be 
able to have oversight over whether or not human rights is being 
protected, whether or not we are using child labor, whether or not we 
are using slave labor.
  And believe me, Mr. Speaker, it exists. In Afghanistan, children are 
making bricks who are 8 years old and 7 years old. As we went to 
Bangladesh and other places around the world, there is child labor. We 
are trying to work against that.
  However, the point is if Congress has no oversight, and we have a 
small body that does not have to listen to us, then who is to say that 
these violations will not be promoted?
  I am going to vote for the Rangel substitute because I believe we 
have ways of making a difference, but I am ashamed that we would put 
forward legislation like this that does not answer the question of 
labor, working with those who believe working people deserve a decent 
place to work; and does not address the environment, because I am 
shamed that if I have a minimal amount of a good quality of life here 
in America, that I would put on others a devil-may-care attitude: Who 
cares about how you function and how you live?
  Finally, I would say that we who have been elected by the people of 
this great Nation, who cast their vote for us to go to the people's 
body, are totally blocked and excluded from any oversight to protect 
the values of the people who we represent, from human rights to the 
rights of children to the rights of women to the fairness in the 
judicial system or court system. None of that comes to us now. We just 
abdicate our responsibilities. I believe that we cannot do that and 
that we must stand up and be heard.
  I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for his untiring work on 
this issue, bringing to the people the point that none of us coming 
from our districts disown our business communities. We work with them; 
and we do a lot for them, I believe, in many, many different aspects, 
because they are our communities.
  But we cannot disown our values tonight and tomorrow, and we must be 
able to say that the two of those could have come together if we would 
have had a process where all of our voices could have been heard.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman of Houston, 
Texas, who always articulates so well her views on this and so many 
other things.
  When we talked about articulating our values and representing those 
values, I think about what the President's

[[Page 24056]]

Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, has been saying the last month 
or so.
  He has been really saying that those of us, whether it is the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Solis), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), any of us in this institution, 
Republicans and Democrats alike, who oppose this trade agreement, he 
really has questioned our commitment to American values and whether we 
want to join the antiterrorism movement.
  In fact, when one supports the position we have taken against these 
trade agreements, we in fact are supporting American values, because 
American values are things like free elections and believing in the 
Constitution and supporting workers around the world, and building a 
better environment and more consumer safety and food safety, and all of 
that.
  That is why it is too bad that their campaign in support of this and 
their arm-twisting, especially in the last 72 hours, has taken on a 
tone of ``you are either with us or against us; you are either against 
terrorism or you are for terrorism, or you are against American values 
or for American values.''
  We are joined by two other people. The gentlewoman from California 
(Ms. Solis) is a freshman member who has devoted her entire career to 
fighting for social justice. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pascrell) raised some very important constitutional questions of 
sovereignty that we touched on and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Strickland) touched on earlier, all four of us.
  He has really attracted a lot of interest in his views of the 
Constitution and why this Trade Promotion Authority really does 
undercut our constitutional provisions and sovereignty.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis).
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. It 
is an honor to be here tonight to talk about this very important issue, 
one that hits home directly for me.
  As a former State Senator in California, back in 1995 I had the 
dubious distinction of representing a district where it was found that 
72 Thai women workers were held hostage, slave labor here in our own 
country, 72 women. Some had been there for 7 years. Some were not paid 
overtime. Some were not even paid minimum wage.
  My whole opinion on this matter is that if we do not have enough 
support here in our own borders at times, how can we also, with all 
honesty and integrity, go out and expect other countries that have 
records that are much more egregious than ours to meet these standards 
that we want to set, that the American public wants to set?
  I can tell Members firsthand how difficult it is trying to secure 
rights for workers now, for immigrant workers in our own country, along 
the border and in East Los Angeles, and the city of El Monte in the San 
Gabriel Valley, which I represent, that people are even being paid 
minimum wage, and they are sometimes not allowed to bargain or join a 
union.
  I know in Mexico and other parts of Central America and South America 
and other parts of the world, people are not allowed to join a union. 
In fact, they are tortured, they are harassed, they are told why they 
cannot and that they will be fired and they will lose their jobs and 
they will go hungry.
  These are the kinds of things that the public should know.
  Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman will yield for a 
comment, the gentlewoman from California has brought up a very 
important point. Is it not ironic that the very people we invite to our 
shores, ``Give us your tired, your hungry,'' come here from countries 
that we are now transporting jobs to?
  We are talking out of both sides of our mouth, and the gentlewoman 
from California has to deal with it, as many of us on both sides of the 
aisle have to deal with unemployment problems. It is growing. We are 
losing our manufacturing base.
  It just struck me when the gentlewoman was speaking, that very 
example, that very anecdotal story the gentlewoman is presenting to 
America, and her heart and sincerity are in it, that we are talking out 
of both sides of our mouths and inviting people here and then 
transporting jobs to their countries. They are needed here first. We 
know our international responsibilities.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I just want to encourage the public to know 
that many of us here in Congress do want to have this very serious 
debate, but we have been left out. In fact, we have been left out all 
the time. We are losing jobs. In my district, we are looking at 
unemployment rates of over 9 percent.
  I am going to talk about that later on this evening. But the fact of 
the matter is that the people we are inspiring here in our country to 
support us, to stick with us, we are telling them one thing and we are 
doing another. Our actions are showing them that we do not care about 
the quality of life for our families here.
  We have to make a statement, and I am proud to be here to say that we 
cannot go home and turn our backs on working families. Working families 
want to know that we are going to take care not only of the domestic 
front here but also those relationships that we want to set across the 
country.
  I know that in Tijuana, for example, there is a Hyundai factory along 
the border there. People tried to organize there, some Mexican workers. 
They were told not to worry, they will get their opportunity. Women and 
men were stuck in a situation there that was very unsafe. There were 
pools of water, electrical lines running, and no safety protections 
whatsoever. These people were putting their lives at risk to build 
automobiles that were going to be shipped all over the world and 
probably right here in our own home States.
  I know if people in my district knew the conditions that other people 
were being forced to work under, they would think twice. And nobody 
talks about that.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, one interesting thing that my friend, 
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), said, people who are 
supporting these trade agreements said if we do these trade agreements, 
it is going to lift up living standards in Mexico and in China, and the 
Chinese will be freer and democracy will break out, and all of that.
  There is no evidence of that in China. In fact, it is every bit as 
oppressive and repressive a regime as it was 3 or 4 years ago, or 2 
years ago when the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) and I worked against giving 
China most favored nation trading privileges.
  I want to briefly tell a story in line of what the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Solis) told.
  About 4 years ago, when Fast Track was defeated in this body, and it 
has been defeated twice in the last 4 years, and will be again 
tomorrow, I went down to sort of look at how NAFTA worked. NAFTA had 
been in effect 4 or 5 years then. I wanted to get a picture of the 
future, and to put a human face on trade and on NAFTA, and on what we 
had to look forward to if we passed Fast Track.
  I went to a home of a husband and wife, and it was nothing; you could 
not describe it as anything else but a shack maybe 20 feet by 20 feet, 
with dirt floors, no running water, no electricity.
  The husband worked at General Electric, an American company, and the 
wife worked at General Electric. They each made 90 cents an hour. There 
were dirt floors, no running water, no electricity. When it rained, the 
floor turned to mud. This was just 3 miles from the United States of 
America. If they had been on our side of the border, they would be 
making $15, $17 an hour, perhaps, with good health care benefits, a 
retirement package, in all likelihood. But on the Mexican side of the 
border they were making 90 cents an hour.
  They were almost in the shadow of the factory where they worked. When 
one looks at one of these shacks or neighborhoods in these so-called 
colonias, we see ditches separating

[[Page 24057]]

some of the shacks with some sort of effluent running through them. It 
could have been industrial waste, human waste, who knows. Children are 
playing nearby.
  The American Medical Association calls the border a pool of 
infectious diseases. They say it has the worst health conditions 
probably in the whole western hemisphere.
  These workers are working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and cannot 
afford to have any kind of a decent lifestyle. They work in these 
wonderfully modern plants, in many cases; but they do not share in the 
wealth they create. They create this wealth for General Electric, and 
they do not share in the wealth they create.
  In Ohio, in New Jersey, in California, workers help to create wealth 
for their employer and share in that wealth. They get something for 
that. They get a decent living standard. They can send their kids to 
college, buy a car, or buy a house.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).
  Mr. PASCRELL. I am listening to my brothers and sisters here, and I 
have listened to folks on both sides of the aisle. I was just as 
opposed to this when President Clinton was there, and I am an equal 
opportunity opposer right now.
  I want to make very clear to everybody, and particularly to those who 
stood on this floor and talked about ``Buy America,'' well, we hope 
there are items that are manufactured in this country that we can buy. 
We are losing our wherewithal. People earned their identity when they 
came to this country and worked with their hands to produce products.
  This is a critical vote tomorrow, one that between 10 and 20 of us 
will decide, in the final analysis.
  Every poll, and the gentleman from Ohio I think will support what I 
am going to say, every poll indicates the American people do not want 
to transfer the powers in the Constitution from the House of 
Representatives, from the Senate, to the executive branch.
  I can cite four or five different ways in which the power of the 
Congress has been eroded over the past 20 years. This is not the way to 
do it. So if Members want to buy American, they have to have something 
to buy. There needs to be something to produce, to be produced.
  Then, there are those who want to try to sway, in the final hours, 
this vote. They say, What we are going to do is make sure that we have 
trade adjustment assistance; or, in other words, it may not be all that 
good, but what we will do is we will have some money over here; and, by 
the way, it is authorized, not appropriated, not appropriated; but they 
say, we will have some money over here to help those that are 
unemployed. It has not worked in the past, and we know how many jobs 
have been lost under NAFTA.
  There are two things, two things, in the final hours of this great 
debate, with respect to all sides here, two motivating forces of the 
opposition, or those supporting giving the President this sole power 
and leaving us out, regardless of what words they put in there: 
stimulus and national security, stimulus and national security.
  They have sent some of the first-line troops out to talk about 
national security, that this is important: if the President does not 
have Fast Track, we cannot defend America.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. We have been talking among ourselves in a bipartisan 
way about the crisis facing the steel industry in this country. The 
President himself has said that maintaining a domestic steel industry 
is a national security issue. I believe it is. How can we produce the 
military hardware we need if we do not have steel that is produced 
domestically, without having to rely on foreign steel?

                              {time}  1830

  These are serious matters. And the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pascrell) mentioned transferring our authority, the House and Senate 
authority, to the executive branch. What really troubles me is then the 
executive branch transferring that authority to some international body 
of unelected representatives, so that the American people have no 
representation, and I think that is what we are facing tomorrow, is the 
possibility of taking an action which can further erode the sovereignty 
of this Nation. I think that is a gross mismanagement of the 
constitutional responsibilities that we took upon ourselves when we 
stood for an election in this House of Representatives.
  Mr. PASCRELL. I might add that there is no real evidence to back up 
the contention that this is an economic stimulus. In fact, if all of 
the data are in, whether we are talking about the balance of trade, 
which is now $435 billion, no one wants to address that. The 
relationship between that balance of trade and what goes on in the 
economy in the United States is profound, is profound.
  There is no real evidence that points out what the President's press 
secretary said on Monday. He said, the President believes that Trade 
Promotion Authority is the stimulus in and of itself to keep the 
economy growing.
  Well, first of all, Fast Track is necessary for the administration on 
two fronts, the World Trade Organization and the proposed Free Trade 
Area of the Americas, FTAA. They are both long-term goals that are not 
going to bring any stimulation to this economy over the next 2 or 3 
years. We are only kidding ourselves.
  In terms of the WTO, the World Trade Organization, disappointed that 
this body has progressed to where it should be, within this Fast Track 
bill there is nothing we can do about that either, nothing. The WTO can 
be a body that advances the ball on such issues as labor and the 
environment but only if we force the issue, and I might add, over 25 
years we have forced the issue on workers rights and environmental 
protections to no gain, to no gain. It has been talk, it has been 
cheap, and it has been profuse, but it has not brought a change about 
in our trade policies whatsoever.
  The high American standards that are commonplace worldwide if we push 
this issue, we know that other countries do not have the labor 
standards that we have and environmental standards. We understand that. 
We understand that. We are not minimizing other nations. What we are 
saying is we cannot be foolish in the face of what we want to 
negotiate. Let us have reciprocal trade agreements, and we have had 
reciprocal trade agreements, where we, on a piece of paper, agree that 
we are going to respect the rights of other nations to decide their own 
fate.
  Why should we keep our rates low while other nations will not allow 
our goods in? And, in many cases, the people in those countries cannot 
afford our goods and services, and we are sacrificing, we are 
sacrificing the brothers' and sisters' jobs in this country.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, during the NAFTA debate in 
1993, we stood in this hall, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) 
and I, for much of the summer doing discussions like this and into the 
fall and into November. And when the vote was held, one of the things 
the other side always said was NAFTA will create jobs. It will be an 
economic stimulus, if you will. It will right our trade imbalance.
  Our trade imbalance in 1994 when NAFTA took effect in January of that 
year was $182 billion. That meant that we imported $182 billion more 
worth of goods than we exported. The NAFTA promoters and the free 
traders and the hot-shot Harvard economists and the President and the 
former secretaries of state and the newspaper editors, CEOs, all said 
this will get fixed.
  Do my colleagues know what the trade deficit that was just announced 
is? $439 billion. That is billion with a B, and that is a $250 billion 
growth in trade deficit. What that means, according to President Bush, 
Sr., Papa Bush, he said, every billion dollars of trade, either deficit 
or surplus, represented between 19,000 and 20,000 jobs. So if you have 
a billion dollar trade deficit, that means you lost 20,000 jobs to 
overseas.

[[Page 24058]]

If you have a billion dollar trade surplus, then you gained 19, 20,000 
jobs. Well, a $250 billion trade deficit, it went from $250 billion 
worse than it was, means 5 million jobs.
  Those are generally industrial jobs. They are well-paying jobs. They 
are jobs that pay benefits. They are jobs where people pay into Social 
Security, a fund that, because of Republican tax cuts, is now more in 
jeopardy than ever before. They pay into Medicare, a fund that is in 
jeopardy because of Republicans bailing out insurance companies. And 
look where we are when we pass these kinds of trade policies. It is 
simply not working when we have those kinds of trade deficits to get 
worse and worse.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Brown) for yielding.
  The gentleman's discussion of the imbalance in our trade reminds me 
of a friend that I had some years ago who frequently played the Ohio 
lottery. He would put 50 or more dollars every week into the Ohio 
lottery, and, occasionally, he would win $10 or $20 or $50. And, guess 
what, he was very free in telling everyone, oh, I hit the lottery. He 
was happy that he got his $50, but he seemed to have forgotten that 
week after week after week he had lost 50 or more dollars.
  That is the way we talk about the trade situation here. The 
administration and those who are for Fast Track will say, oh, since 
NAFTA we send more agricultural products to Mexico. They do not want to 
talk about the flood of products that are coming in from Mexico and 
from other countries.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. As living standards continue to go down in Mexico, 
I would add.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Absolutely. They want to talk about the modest 
increase in exports, but they do not want to talk about the multiple 
thousands of jobs that have been lost as a result of the flooding of 
imports.
  As we go to the shopping malls to buy our holiday gifts, it is very, 
very difficult, as my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pascrell), had said, it is very difficult, impossible to find a 
television that has been constructed and built in this country. It is 
very difficult to find many products that are American made, and that 
is because we are being flooded by cheap imports, built in some cases 
by slave labor, and in countries that are absolutely opposed to our way 
of life, to our democratic institutions, and yet we continue to do 
this.
  It is beyond belief that we could be contemplating doing tomorrow 
what some want to do.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I absolutely would yield.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, just to touch briefly and say, on NAFTA and 
what is happening in Mexico, there is a big discussion about the rain 
forest and the decimation of the rain forest in Mexico and South 
America. There is a big issue regarding timber coming into this country 
and people from the Mexican side that are saying we are also losing our 
well-being and our livelihood because we are forced by big corporations 
to cut down the timber and then send it here and into other parts of 
the world.
  We are talking about erosion of our environment. We are talking about 
degradating the quality of life for Mexicans as well.
  So who is winning? The big corporations, the big factories. The folks 
that run those operations do not live there. They live in the ivory 
tower, but they are taking and reaping some of the resources, the 
natural resources that currently exist in that country.



  I can tell my colleagues that Mexico still has a long way to go in 
terms of providing protections for the working class people there that 
are suffering every single day and not seeing any kind of return on 
their work.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Let me shift for a moment to an issue that we have 
all talked about before, and I would like the last 10 minutes or so to 
discuss for a moment and that is the issue of food safety. We see in 
this country 5,000 people a year die from food-borne illness, not 
nearly all of them from imported fruits and vegetables, but certainly 
there is a problem in our food inspection in this country, too, but 
some significant amount comes from that. We see about 800,000 Americans 
get sick a year. About 1/10th that many get hospitalized from food-
borne illnesses.
  Yesterday, Dr. Mohammad Akhter, the top public health official in 
this country, who is the executive director of the American Public 
Health Association, was talking about Fast Track. And he said that 
Trade Promotion Authority on which we will vote tomorrow, he said that 
we can count on the fact that if we pass Trade Promotion Authority and 
more trade agreements like this we will see more food come across the 
border and into this country by truck and plane and train and all, more 
food come into this country that is not inspected. He said we will see 
more infectious disease outbreaks. We will see more illness, food-borne 
illness. We will see more deaths. We will see more hospitalizations.
  When we consider that when NAFTA passed, 8 percent of fruits and 
vegetables in this country that we, 8 percent of the imported fruits 
and vegetables in this country were inspected. Today, it is 1/10th that 
number. It is .7 percent, 7/10s of 1 percent. That means for every 140 
crates of broccoli that come across the border into this country, one 
crate is inspected. For every 140 crates of peaches, one crate is 
inspected.
  I have stood at the border in Laredo, Nuevo Laredo in the Texas-
Mexican border; and I have seen the FDA, the way that they examine 
broccoli when it comes in. They do not have high-tech equipment there. 
They cannot get immediate reads on antimicrobial contaminants, on 
pesticide residues, on anything like that. They simply take two bunches 
of broccoli, slam them down in a steel crate and look for any insects 
that might come out, dead or alive. If live insects come out they spray 
the truckload. Other than that, the products move on.
  We have not put the kind of equipment at the border to detect 
antimicrobial contaminants. We have not put at the border facilities 
and equipment to be able to detect pesticide residues, and we know that 
there are pesticide residues on there because pesticides that are 
illegal to use in the United States are still manufactured here and 
sold to developing countries, put on fields and sent back into the 
United States.
  We are not protecting the American people. We pass Trade Promotion 
Authority, according to Dr. Akhter, the top public health official in 
the United States, we are asking for more food-borne illnesses, more 
deaths and more hospitalizations. And we owe it to this country, to 
people that go to grocery stores, to all of us that eat at our kitchen 
table and go to restaurants and eat fresh produce coming in from other 
countries in the world, we owe it to them to do a much better job on 
this.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. I believe when an American consumer goes to a 
supermarket to buy food or fresh produce they have a right to know 
where that food comes from, and I believe we need labelling of country 
of origin. I believe American consumers, if they are given a choice, 
will most of the time choose to buy products that are grown and 
manufactured in our country. But the fact is they do not have a choice 
because they are deprived of that necessary information, and one of the 
things they would like to see done is to require that the country of 
origin be made available to the consumer. Then the consumer can choose. 
But without that information the consumer is deprived of the 
opportunity of making the choice to buy the American-produced food or 
the American-produced product.
  Why should we keep that information from the American consumer? It 
just does not seem reasonable to me that this House would not take 
action to provide this information so that the American consumer can be 
informed.

[[Page 24059]]


  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. At the same time, we have the ability to raise 
standards around the world. We have a choice tomorrow when we vote for 
or against Trade Promotion Authority, so-called Fast Track, we can 
continue to dismantle our standards, to weaken our truck safety laws, 
to weaken our food safety laws, to lower our environmental standards, 
to dismantle our safety in the workplace standards. We can vote that 
way or we can cast a vote against Trade Promotion Authority and begin 
to lift up food safety standards for ourselves and for the rest of the 
world and begin to lift up truck safety standards, to begin to lift up 
environmental standards.
  Whether it is pesticides, whether it is environmental laws, we can do 
better. Why should we say to an American corporation that goes to the 
Mexican border on the Mexican side, if you are going to produce cars in 
that country you are going to follow the same laws. In terms of what 
you dump into the sewers, what you put into the air, whether you 
pollute the environment, you are going to follow the same laws that you 
do in the United States. How about when you go into Mexico and build 
cars? Then you are going to follow the same worker safety protection 
laws that you do in this country.
  It is outrageous that these American companies go there. They brag 
about how green they are in the United States and how well they treat 
their workers. They go to a developing country. They do not treat them 
well at all.
  I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).
  Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Speaker, I am going to bring up a sore subject some 
of us may not like, but let me bring it up anyway, because this is it. 
This is the vote tomorrow, and I am very concerned about members of my 
own party, to be very honest with you, and I respect all persuasions 
within my own party, regardless of where they fall on the spectrum.
  I have an inner laugh when I hear our party needs to be the party of 
inclusion. We need to reach out to business. Well, let me tell my 
colleagues who the people are who have been at my door in the last 2 
years.

                              {time}  1845

  They have been owners of textile mills, they have been owners of 
machine shops, they have been owners of cable companies. Owners, 
entrepreneurs who hire the folks that we are all concerned about, but 
we should be concerned about those who put the capital up to go into 
business in the first place.
  So I want to make sure to tell my brothers and sisters in my own 
party that we want to be inclusive. Both parties want to try to be 
inclusive in whatever way they choose. But do not come back to me and 
say we are never going to get the support. And I think I have a right 
to talk about this, talk turkey here tonight. That is how critical this 
vote is.
  We have an erosion of the Constitution of the United States. We have 
had an erosion of jobs. We have had an erosion of food safety. We do 
not need a further erosion. We do not wish to deny this. We do not want 
to stick our heads in the sand and say things will get better. They did 
not get better with NAFTA, and they are not going to get better with 
this vehicle if we support it tomorrow.
  I want to thank my colleague for getting us together, the gentleman 
from Ohio, because he has stayed on this case. He has not given it a 
one-shot deal. The gentleman has worked on it since I have been here, 
for 5 years, and I commend him.
  The American people understand this better than we do; and the 
American people, in every poll, have indicated they want their jobs 
protected. They understand we need to trade with other countries. They 
know that this is a world economy, that we live in a global village. 
But the folks in my town work in Paterson, New Jersey. They love the 
world. They have been fighting in wars, and they will defend us. Are we 
going to defend their jobs?
  And if it is textiles and machinery today, what will it be tomorrow? 
That is the question that every person who is a Member of the House of 
Representatives must ask themselves tomorrow before they vote. 
Textiles, cable wire, machinery, leather goods today. What is tomorrow? 
Or shall it be, whose ox is gored? That is not what America is all 
about. America is about our being the last hope here on this floor to 
protect the interests of working families. We are the last vestige of 
hope.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Solis).
  Ms. SOLIS. The gentleman just hit a real soft spot for me in my 
heart. My mother, who is now retired, worked for about 25 years for a 
big toy maker in my district, standing on her feet most of her 20 years 
there, and now has some very serious problems with her legs. That 
company employed over 2,000 people in our community. They left. They 
went to Mexico, then they went to China.
  We now import those same toys. Many of those toys place harm upon our 
children because they do not meet our consumer safety standards. And 
nobody is crying out saying, wait a minute, what have we done here. We 
let go of these jobs, we let go of those pensions, those health and 
welfare benefits that went with those families and jobs. They went 
somewhere else, yet the people making those same items do not have any 
protections and maybe get 10 cents a day for producing products that 
they end up sending back here that somebody buys for $20 or $30. That 
is wrong.
  Mr. PASCRELL. And the answer to the gentlewoman's mother is, well, if 
your job is extinguished, you will have to go to another job, a 
service-related job.
  I ask the gentleman from Ohio, is that what has happened under NAFTA? 
Have we seen those service jobs? In fact, what have we seen?
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. In Ohio, we are threatened right now with losing 
3,000 jobs at LTV Steel. People say, well, the economy will change. If 
they lose their jobs, they will find another job. They clearly will not 
find another job close to what they are making.
  Before closing, I thank very much my colleagues, the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), 
and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), for joining me, and 
also earlier the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).
  Let me sum up with this: we in this country believe in the free 
market system. We believe in free enterprise, but we also believe in 
rules. The rules are that we have environmental protections, we have 
minimum wage laws, we have worker safety protections. We should believe 
in the same kinds of rules in free trade. We believe in trade, but we 
think we should have similar kinds of rules.
  We should have environmental standards to govern the rules of trade. 
We should have worker safety standards and labor standards. It has 
worked in this country to raise our standard of living so we have a 
huge middle class. Those same kinds of rules could work 
internationally, in the global economy, if this body tomorrow defeats 
trade promotion authority and begins to write trade law that lifts 
people up all over the world. I thank my colleagues for joining me 
tonight.

                          ____________________